Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @08:42PM
from the springfield-diagrammed dept.

Hemos recommends the coverage over at Wired of a project to digitize nuclear reactor art. "Not all nuclear reactors are built alike. Power plant designs can vary in their fuels, coolants, and configurations, a fact beautifully illustrated by a series of reactor wall charts originally published in issues of Nuclear Engineering International during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the charts have been lovingly collected by Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer at Sandia National Laboratory. Recently, he completed his collection... and began to digitize the drawings. The first eight out of more than 100 have now been permanently archived online... 'This is not a CAD/CAM-type thing,' Knief said. 'This really is art.'"

I am happy that this guy has the capacity to recognize that these blueprints are art. There's a lot of potential in these diagrams. Hopefully this site will be in a constant state of flux, with him adding new pieces of artwork. Even though it would be easy to get grounded by the mundane details of a nuke reactor, I still think that the majority of these diagrams are shockingly interesting.

Better to have one, or just a few designs, approved and immunized against lawsuits challenging their safety. Components could then be manufactured in factories, providing better quality control and reduced costs.

Well the rate of construction was always pretty low and they where still trying out new ideas all the time. Even conventional plants tended to be one offs at that time.You are right though when the number of reactors built is high. The Navy did exactly that with subs.All of the Skipjack, Permit, Sturgeon, George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Lafayette class subs use the same reactor design. There was a a few one offs in that time to try new ideas but the vast majority where standardized reactors. The Navy th

Not really. They are too expensive for power production.Because they are on ships and subs they are very hard to refuel so they use a totaly differn't fuel cycle.From what I have "read" most us navy reactors use enriched uranium for fuel combined with burnable poisons. As the fuel gets used up so do the poisons so the power output stays about the same for the life of the core which is supposed to be greater than 20 years. For power reactors it is much easier to refuel so there is no need for the expensive a

For you electronics geeks out there who are into this kind of thing and want some cool posters to decorate your thinking space, There's this, [synthesysresearch.com] this, [synthesysresearch.com], and this [synthesysresearch.com] which are all made by Synthesys Reasearch. They will send you a poster for free if you ask.

Oh no, he's helping the terrorists by showing them what a reactor looks like and how it works. The Iranian people can use that to build 100billion teratons of nukes to kill stuff. Hang him.

*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device -- the best you'll get is a dirty bomb. You can use a breeder reactor to create fissionable material, but breeder reactors are also useful because they can take many different kinds of fuel and produce power from it, whereas conventional reactors can only use fissile uranium and it degrades to useless and highly toxic byproducts relatively quickly. Anyone who studies physics and engineering could build most any reactor design. T

The biggest risk is a rogue nation acquiring detailed schematics on how to build a warhead from a country that already possesses the technology... Right now, Russia and former USSR member-states are the only plausible sources for this scenario being realized.

Err... have you forgotten about Pakistan? They've got nukes already, and would be far more like to be unstable and also inclined to share with the "rogue states". And if you do some research, you'll find that they were allegedly helped to that point by China (for more details see the background on A.Q. Khan of Pakistan [wikipedia.org]), which might indicate that the threat is not so much from Russia but from China.

India has the raw resources, it's unlikely for cultural and economic reasons that they will develop a nuclear weapons program in the immediate future.

... errrrrr I think you need to do your research again: India's already got a nuclear weapons program. [wikipedia.org]. India's had a nuclear program since 1974. Indeed, it's in reaction too India's nuclear program that Pakistan did whatever it could to develop its own nuclear arsenal, as detailed in the link above.

There are a lot of ways to make your point on the internet, and one of them is to not talk about shit you don't know. It's Ad hominem [wikipedia.org]. And yes,seriously, that's a wiki link. If you would deign to look at it you might learn something, like the fact that dakameleon didn't commit an ad hominem. Saying India won't develop nuclear weapons when they already have makes you look like an idiot, and I thought dakameleon let you off lightly.

Agree, and raise you one... North Korea developed a nuke program, but Iran is uncapable of doing so? North Korea has been stuck in the 1970s for years, with an economy that can't even grow enough food to feed it's population (well, now that millions have died off, maybe it can support the new, smaller population). Iran is far better off than North Korea, and likely has North Korea's help (just like Syria did).

Correct.
A few years ago everyone was saying N.Korea is ahead of Iran in missile technology. 8 months ago Iran put their first locally built small satellite into orbit with their locally developed 2 stage rocket (9th or 10th country to do so, and the fact that it is 2 stage means it is considerably powerful and they can still enhance it by adding a 3rd stage). 2 months after that N.Korea tried to do the same with their 3 stage rocket but failed.

"...you crapped all over it with an ad homid attack. Also -- wikipedia? Seriously?"

Yeah, seriously. If you can point out where the WP entry is factually incorrect you may have a point otherwise dissmissing something because it comes from WP is simply intellectual snobbery. The GP was correct and rather than a pedantic reply about the word "develop" you could do your homework before posting crap and/or grow some balls* and admit you were wrong.

*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device

Sorry to point this out, but you can and it has been done several times. Small nuclear reactors are a useful addition to a nuclear weapons program. Egypt and Indonesia are two nations to ask about that with their "civilian" reactors that produce very little power.

There are a lot of ways to correct factual errors that don't involve telling the other person to shut up.

You made a comment which was entirely composed of factual errors on slashdot, and now you're upset that people are picking it apart and suggesting that you shut your piehole until something useful might come out of it? You must be new here.

Your post had a lot of excellent points, but then you crapped all over it with an ad homid attack.

Your comment is amateurish at best, and your followup whinge is pathetic. But if you're a whiner in training, I guess it works. Next time, take a deep breath and count to ten before you reply. If "it's just not

In fact just make sure you take a look at which countries have nukes before you comment on this again.

There are a lot of ways to correct factual errors that don't involve telling the other person to shut up.

He didn't tell you to shut up, he told you to do your research before you comment.

Your post had a lot of excellent points, but then you crapped all over it with an ad homid attack.

This isn't an ad hominem attack. Attacking your argument on the basis that it's factually incorrect isn't personal. It's not like he called you a hypersensitive, touchy bitch and then used that to deride your argument.

Also -- wikipedia? Seriously?

It's not really hard to back up the info found there on this subject, and it's a convenient first line for the information.

There's no such thing as an "ad homid(sic)" attack. It's a logical fallacy to discredit a person's stance on an issue because of the person, which is an ad hominem argument. But telling somebody to read up on something before responding again isn't an ad hominem. It's not a logical fallacy to call somebody an asshole, unless you're also using their asshole-ism as a refutation of their argument.

*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device -- the best you'll get is a dirty bomb. You can use a breeder reactor to create fissionable material, but breeder reactors are also useful because they can take many different kinds of fuel and produce power from it, whereas conventional reactors can only use fissile uranium and it degrades to useless and highly toxic byproducts relatively quickly.

*blinks* Oh how you would have failed my fuel cycles class. Plutonium is present in spent fuel from even non-breeder reactors. Though it only represents 1% or so of the spent fuel, there are some potential advantages to using plutonium from spent fuel over highly enriched uranium. Plutonium can be extracted chemically from spent fuel while U235 can not be separated from U238 without enrichment facilities. The process of chemically removing the plutonium requires much less infustructure than enrichment of uranium. That being said, the byproducts are much more of a nuisance. Still, if a country wanted to claim to be using nuclear technology for power while steadily stockpiling weapons grade material, a power reactor and PUREX-like (Plutonium - URanium EXtraction ) reprocessing system would be one way to do it. That is why there have always been such large concerns over PUREX reprocessing.

One type of power reactor could be of particular interest to countries wishing to produce weapons grade material without performan ANY enrichment. Those are natural-uranium reactors which burn un-enriched uranium as their fuel. They require moderation by heavy water though, which tends to offset some of the cost benefits of not requiring enriched material. Still, being able to use only mechanical and chemical processing of uranium ore and leaving out the whole enrichment step does have its advantage. That is probably why India produced its plutonium through chemically reprocessed spent-fuel from a natural uranium reactor (CIRUS). That's also probably why Iran built a heavy water plant near Arak and is currently building a 40MW light-water moderated reactor as well. This is not a power reactor of course but is not particularly special. The reason a reactor like this would be used instead of a larger scale power reactor is because it is much cheaper if you leave off all those multi-million dollar power side components like tubrines and don't have to scale the system up to something that can light a city. To argue that "conventional" reactors can not be used to produce weapons grade fuel is incorrect. While most reactors used to do so are not power reactors, they are also not particularly unconventional in any way that makes them more difficult to build. In fact, they can be built much more cheaply than a power reactor and with a much smaller footprint.

requires exceptionally precise and expensive equipment and a lot of technical know-how to develop several key components to creating a conventional nuclear device.

This part is true enough for some of the more efficient bomb designs like those that evolved from "Fat Man." While one can use a technically simple gun-type bomb with highly-enriched uranium, this is not practical for a plutonium bomb. If a country wants to use plutonium from spent fuel then they must decide between a more technically challenging design with higher efficiency or a simple but low efficiency device like a two-point linear implosion bomb. The latter is not particularly appealing for a large scale and long term weapons program due to the relatively low yield, but has been considered a potential "suite-case nuke" design since it can be built to an extremely small diameter That definately doesn't sound like a design someone worried about terrorism would be concerned with, right?

India has the raw resources, but it's unlikely for cultural and economic reasons that they will develop a nuclear weapons program in the immediate future.

To argue that "conventional" reactors can not be used to produce weapons grade fuel is incorrect. While most reactors used to do so are not power reactors, they are also not particularly unconventional in any way that makes them more difficult to build.

But, they are unconventional in their design compared to a classic electrical generation PWR/BWR, so "art" made using a PWR is pretty useless for designing a Pu production reactor.

Since you're not going all Rankine cycle on it, delta-temperature thru the reactor is irrelevant, may as well make it as low as possible since you're limited by pellet core and surface temps, so keeping the top and bottom at about the same temp means you can run the overall core at the highest level (a high delta-T would mean you'

Not to say you can't produce SOME bomb grade Pu from a perfectly innocent electrical generation plant, but a real engineer would not do it.

If you only need a small amount for a small bomb, arguably more useful for an act of terrorism anyway, then that seems like an ideal cover, because others will have your same reasoning. If the reactor obviously won't be useful for power generation, what's left?

Not to say you can't produce SOME bomb grade Pu from a perfectly innocent electrical generation plant, but a real engineer would not do it.

That sort of thing would be a political decision weighing the perceived value of reliability with the great loss of efficiency involved in using the same reactor for both tasks. Not that it matters much, but the BN-600 in Beloyarsk is used for both power generation and plutonium production.

I never said this pictures were useful at all in developing a Pu reactor or that a reactor should be run as a power reactor. They are, in fact, irrelevant. I was pointing out that the idea that one could not use a

One reason is the U232 decay products, whose hard gamma emissions frighten even the steeliest nuclear scientists and technicians. These facilities require many times the usual amount of shielding to be safe. That said, research is ongoing. There is a lot of thorium around, and countries without uranium can usually scrape some thorium together.

The math and engineering is well-understood and not technically challenging for a well-funded organization.

It requires exceptionally precise and expensive equipment and a lot of technical know-how to develop several key components to creating a conventional nuclear device. Specifically, the critical function is how to model the compression shock wave in the fissile material that begins the chain reaction.

You're forgetting about "gun type" bombs, which are basically a sawn-off naval cannon, and are so trivial to build that the Americans didn't even bother testing the design before dropping it on Japan.

They were easy to build in the forties, and the only reason they aren't used now is because they're inefficient and too heavy for most launch vehicles.

A rogue state that just wants to build a "few" nukes could easily make these. As long as the intended use was terrorism, and not strategic ICBM warfare, then the

You're forgetting about "gun type" bombs, which are basically a sawn-off naval cannon, and are so trivial to build that the Americans didn't even bother testing the design before dropping it on Japan.

They're trivial to build, once you've done the non trivial tasks of designing them and creating the infrastructure to obtain the fuel. But the real reason the American's didn't test the design is that they used a generous amount of design margin to ensure it didn't need to be tested.

You know everyone would say Iran is not able to put a satellite into orbit and they did it 8 months ago. Before that everyone would say N.Korea provides the technology to Iran. N.Korea tried to put its satellite into orbit 3 months after Iran and they failed.

They have already designed two reactors and one of them is being completed (50MW) in 2 years. The other 250MW reactor's design has been completed and designs are approved by a company in Switzerland.

Oh no, he's helping the terrorists by showing them what a reactor looks like and how it works. The Iranian people can use that to build 100billion teratons of nukes to kill stuff. Hang him.

*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device -- the best you'll get is a dirty bomb.

Somebody missed the tag.

As a side note, I remember those drawings well; they really were a work of art. Technical illustration is a very under appreciated art form. I had a friend who did that; he also was a scale model rocket builder par excellance.

Another art form was the scale models built for checking piping routing - miniature models of the entire plant. We had one in the visitor's center.

Sure, for an implosion bomb with a higher yield. However, a gun-type fission bomb isn't the least bit complicated. The US didn't even test the design for the Hiroshima bomb - The implosion bomb design (the type dropped on Nagasaki)was the one used for the Trinity test.

Is anyone else a bit frightened that the Guangdong plant picture shows what looks to be simple trusses and corrugated aluminum siding over the turbine section, where others use poured concrete and I-beams?

Not really. You just need to keep the rain out as in the turbine hall of a coal fired power station.By the time you get that far it's just normal steam. The worst that can happen if a turbine loses a blade is dead people that happened to be close to it and a very big expensive hole in the ground.

Is anyone else a bit frightened that the Guangdong plant picture shows what looks to be simple trusses and corrugated aluminum siding over the turbine section, where others use poured concrete and I-beams?

Given that the others mostly use simple trusses or lightweight I-beams, I don't see what there is to be frightened about. Doubly so since you don't need anything more than light construction over the turbine hall.

Is anyone else a bit frightened that the Guangdong plant picture shows what looks to be simple trusses and corrugated aluminum siding over the turbine section, where others use poured concrete and I-beams?

Did they skimp on anything else, I wonder?

Uh, San Onofree has an open air turbine. Gives a beautiful view of the Pacific just north of San Diego.

While nucleate boiling does occur in pressurized water reactors, they are referred to as "Pressurized Water Reactors" or PWRs while reactors that employ lower pressure single coolant loops where steam is generated directly from the bulk-boiling of the coolant are referred to as "Boiling Water Reactors" or BWRs. While this might not seem to be a clear separation, among nuclear engineers it is almost universally understood what one means by BWR as opposed to a PWR. A nuclear engineer, nor most people even r

My dad worked in Nuclear Fuel Supply, and I learned how arduous the process can be, and lengthy. But I also waited with bated breath for the Midland plant:( [wikipedia.org] to come online... 1972 was the date in "Our Friend, the Atom", a comic book produced to educate the youth like me.

And even then, I wondered... Why they don't make them essentially the same... like the Saturn V. I still wonder.

I also wonder how many anti-nuke activists are wishing that they'd kept their mouths shut and given us a fighting chance with carbon emissions. Or how many are driving SUVs.

And even then, I wondered... Why they don't make them essentially the same... like the Saturn V. I still wonder.

Because nothing was good enough so each was an incremental improvement.There's potentially a very good small reactor that will be commerically available in a few years based on submarine reactor techology from Los Alamos. The Chinese have some pebble bed prototypes that are probably running by now. Both of those technologies have the potential to be small units mass produced in large numbers, pr

I used to love these style of drawings in Reader Digest's Book's. About space pods, or sea pods. When I was small, I would imagine myself in one of these and float around. I used to make lego models of them. Am I sick, pedobear?

Starglider29a asked why they is a lack of uniformity. In the US at least there was no standard design. Each was basically as "one off" because the company that won the contract changed from reactor to reactor. A low bid contract method. This meant each reactor was a "one off".

My understanding is that in France the government commissioned a standard design which it then licensed out. This had some benefits:1) The design allowed better project management. Everyone knew what needed to be done. This made estimation of effort easier.

2) Due to point #1, each company had a better idea of it took to build a reactor and bid accordingly.This also helped the costs to be budgeted.

3) Lessons learned from one reactor can be incorporated into the newer, yet to be built, reactors. It is also easier to retrofit older reactors with lessons learned. In short, incremental improvement.

4) Related to pint 3, it is easier to QA a standard design. You know what to expect and if the expectations are not met something is wrong.

Making every reactor a "one off" is crazy. I googled +ISO +"nuclear reactor design" and came up without a comprehensive spec. Having a standard might be a good idea.

As much as it gauls me, Plopez is correct, although reactor designs weren't quite that diverse. In the US there were basically 4 NSSS (Nuclear Steam Supply System) suppliers: GE, who made BWR's; and Westinghouse, Babcock & Wilcox, and Combustion Engineering, who all made PWR's. Within each of the suppliers the designs were similar; the problem came in when the utilities specified the units. Some wanted big, some wanted small. Some wanted X, others wanted Y. So the suppliers competed against each other within that specification, but no 2 utilities had the same specs. Then they'd submit each individual design to the NRC, who would do a de novo analysis on each individual design and license it.

Should they have simply licensed 1-2 designs and be done with it? In retrospect, yes, but keep in mind that, at the time, the governmental style in the US and France were quite different. Licensing only 1 design created a de facto monopoly on NSSS's in France, and they were OK with that. In the US in the 50's and 60's, that looked an awful lot like communism.

It's more complicated than that. The NSSS was supplied by one of the 4 companies. It may as well have been a heat pump, from that standpoint. But who did the design and installation of the REST of the plant was all over the place. Bechtel was the biggest player, United Engineers and Constructors was another,, Brown and Root, Fluor-Daniel, etc. but the list went on. Some utilities did the contracting themselves, which could be good (Duke Energy) or bad (Zimmer).

I guess my hope is that a neutral 3rd body would not be as corruptible or as incompetent as the Old Soviet Union. Even in the US there are problems with conflict of interest as well as problems inherent to low bid contracting.

With a poor design you can find the flaw, fix and design it out. Or shut down all nukes affected completely. At least you know the scope of the problem, instead of guessing.

When I first read the comment I thought of an article I read about the poor design of Chernobyl. When I went to find that article, I also found out the Soviets had made multiple copies. I agree that in general you can standardize on a good design if you start with that your goal initially. And as you build them you can make improvements. But in general in the US we are not planning as a nation, each utility is on their own to determine needs. France is probably smart to plan like a nation and look toward bu

By greased palms do you mean handing $150 over to the cashier at a college book store? If you think it should be more restrictive than that, well then you propose a nation with aging nuclear power plants, a nuclear navy, nuclear powered exploration probes (yes, most of the ones that go farther than you can spit do), a growing issue with nuclear waste, an aging and very large nuclear arsenal but almost no nuclear engineers to maintain, upgrade and replace those things.

Yeah, I don't think you understand what I'm talking about. With diagrams of existing power plants available, anyone can acquire them for nefarious purposes.

I'm not talking about taking them and using the diagrams to make a bomb/plant/whatever. I'm talking about someone taking the diagrams and using them for the purposes of planning intrusion routes with nefarious purposes in mind.

The technical details of how to build a reactor need not be sequestered - just keep these crude diagrams unavailable, please.

This reminds me of a recent feature in The Guardian, which calls for the preservation of a nuclear power plant in Snowdonia, Wales since it was designed by the British modernist architect Sir Basil Spence. Linky [guardian.co.uk].

The whole British Magnox [wikipedia.org] series is very interesting in terms of architecture and technical design.

They ran on natural uranium metal (no enrichment required), were graphite moderated and used carbon dioxide and the primary coolant. Most were run under manual control. In fact, a lot of the plant was manually operated too.

All but the very first generation (Calder Hall and Chapel Cross) could be, and were, refueled on-load. The refueling programmes (implemented monthly) were usually worked out by hand. Over f